Southern California Edison Proposes Clean Hydrogen Power Generation to Reduce GHG Emissions

According to a press release dated May 17, Edison International’s (NYSE:EIX) electricity utility, Southern California Edison (SCE), has requested approval to build and test a commercial 600 MW power plant to determine the feasibility of a new combination of several advanced “clean” coal technologies in an effort to advance these emerging approaches to low-carbon generation.

Their proposal consist of:

• A gasifier that combines coal and steam with a controlled amount of oxygen under high pressures to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
• Converting the carbon monoxide to additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the shift conversion.
• Further processing the gasses to remove sulfur, mercury, and carbon dioxide.
• Sequestering the carbon in a depleted oil formation, enabling enhanced oil recovery, or in a deep saline formation.
• Producing a mostly hydrogen fuel, emitting only 10 percent of the carbon released by an integrated gasification combined-cycle coal project without carbon capture.
• The hydrogen is fed to gas turbines where electricity is generated.
• Exhaust heat from the gas turbines is used to create steam and drive additional turbines.
• The use of these technologies in a full-scale, 600-megawatt (MW) commercial generating facility.

The advanced technologies in SCE’s proposed study, an approach the utility calls Clean Hydrogen Power Generation (CHPG), are being considered or tested in clean coal projects elsewhere. The SCE plan would be the first assessment of a full-scale, 600-MW facility using all of them. One of the main differences between this process and others is that the carbon monoxide is converted to additional hydrogen enabling the gas turbines to only burn hydrogen.

SCE is seeking authorization to commit $52 million of revenues it collects from customer rates during a two-year period to an advanced technology feasibility study. If approved, this would represent less than a quarter of one percent of current customer rates.

SCE also is the nation’s leading purchaser of renewable energy, buying and delivering approximately 13 billion kWh in 2006 from wind, solar, biomass, biogas, geothermal, and small hydro suppliers – 16.7% of the power it delivered to customers. An equivalent amount of generation using fossil fuels would produce 7 million tons of GHG emissions. SCE purchases one-sixth of all U.S. renewable energy used to generate electricity for retail sale, including more than 90% of all the U.S. solar generation.

The above article was adapted from the press release referred to in the first paragraph.